Introducing Ukranian accelerator Eastlabs and its first teams

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You may not want to hear about yet another accelerator, but the background of Eastlabs is not an ordinary one. Behind Eastlabs is a financial might and expertise of EastOne Group backed by a Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk who is one of the most successful businessmen in the country. Compared to other accelerators the funding from Eastlabs is fairly decent: the startups receive $20 000 in exchange for 15 percent of equity and four-month acceleration program. EastOne may choose to do a follow-on investment once the program is complete.

The management team of EastLabs are Eveline Buchatskiy, a Brazilian with international business track record, a former CEO of Ukraine’s leading media company Economika and an INSEAD graduate, Hrish Lotlikar, a New Yorker based in Kiev, with early stage venture capital and investment banking background under his belt, and Olga Belkova, a former member of the executive team for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

The accelerator launched in January 2012, attracted over 100 applications and selected four teams. By the end of April they will graduate.

ActiveGift, whose launch we have recently covered, offers a new way to choose gifts for people by offering them a list of presents to choose from anonymously.

Findguru.me is a place to find educational courses. It integrates social features via Facebook integration allowing to invite friends, meet other attendees, as well as rating of teachers’ performance. Currently they are targeting CIS markets and the website is in Russian.

MyTeamVoice is a group voice communication service for online gamers. In the MMOG voice communication options are limited, and MyTeamVoice resolves to change that. The complexity of technology required 10-developer team hack for 6 months (and they are not done yet).

Runfaces, which takes on Sean Parker’s Airtime, is a video social network place. It helps meet new people based on interests through video interaction. Usage of text in this network is reduced to the bare minimum. Anonymity issues and adult content abuse common for random video chats such as Chart Roulette (they say!) is dealt with Facebook login and moderation. Since its launch in October 2011 it has been getting some viral love from the US states of Kansas and Missouri, getting 10 000 new users every day. Once the members started to use video chat features regularly, they crashed the site and the team had to rebuild its technology to make it more scalable. Unlike Airtime, Runfaces is live.

In May EastLabs are launching another program which will take 4 months. They have already identified 3 participating teams, but expect the new batch to be larger. Apply here.

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Natasha Starkell

TwitterLinkedInFacebook Google+ Natasha Starkell is the founder and CEO of GoalEurope, advisory firm focusing on technology investment and software development in Russia and Eastern Europe. Prior to starting GoalEurope she has worked in the field of finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and offshore outsourcing at Unisys Corporation in Switzerland and United Kingdom. She has an MBA degree from London Business School. She speaks Russian, English and German. She lives in Northern Germany.